6 posts categorized "Obituaries"

August 05, 2009

When you meet outstanding architects and interact with them over a long period of time--sharing your passion for the field, challenging them face-to-face, respecting their work (or not)--something feels cut out of you when they die. That's the way I feel today after reading The New York Times obituary of Charles Gwathmey, one of the "New York Five" who reinterpreted the High Modernist forms of Le Corbusier

I first encountered Gwathmey when I reviewed his 1992 expansion and renovation of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York City. He was a tough guy, kind of intimdating, very New York. I gave the job a mixed review, writing that it enhanced the Guggenheim's interior but took "the zing out of what is arguably the finest piece of sculpture in the Guggenheim's collection: the exterior of the museum's stunning, spiraling rotunda."

Last year, I saw Gwathmey again, under very different circumstances. This was at Yale, and he was sick, as I found out when I got off the train in New Haven and ran into the architect Peteter Eisenman, a friend of Gwathmey's and the husband of Cindy Davidson, the former editor of Inland Architect. After giving me some gentle grief about some of my past reviews of his buildings, Eisenman told me about Gwathmey's cancer.

July 16, 2009

The great architectural photographer Julius Shulman, whose images artfully captured the energy and innovation of Southern California mid-century modernism, died Wednesday. He was 98 years old.

Here is a link to an obituary from the Los Angeles Times. And here is my 2007 review of a terrific Shulman collection (at left, Shulman's iconic 1960 photograph of Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 22):

Any collection that costs this much and weighs in at roughly 30 pounds would seem to be an exercise in megalomania, but that's not the case with this tribute to celebrated photographer Julius Shulman, which spans the years 1939 to 1981. His pictures brilliantly convey the design essence of mid-century Southern California Modernism, not only capturing the relationship of these buildings to the landscape but also suggesting how people lived in them. Publisher Benedikt Taschen has painstakingly culled the images, which portray buildings by Richard Neutra, the famous Case Study houses published in Arts & Architecture magazine, Palm Springs getaways and houses on Malibu Beach. Shulman's ability to transform three-dimensional space to the two dimensions of the printed page is so captivating that the three-volume behemoth somehow manages to be a page turner.

June 30, 2009

Future Chicago architect Ezra Gordon's life took a decisive turn during his Army service in World War II when he was impressed by the magnificence of Europe's cathedrals. Until then, his family said, Mr. Gordon had dreamed of moving to Palestine and helping to establish a Jewish state there. But a taste of the soaring cathedrals kindled a passion for architecture.

The result was a five-decade career characterized by quiet buildings and a strong social conscience.

With his partner, Jack Levin, Mr. Gordon designed everything from towering Near North Side residential complexes to South Side urban renewal projects (below, The Commons) to a small, round psychiatric building at Michael Reese Hospital that Chicago's Olympic planners have targeted for demolition.

Mr. Gordon, 88, who also was a longtime member of the architecture faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, died Sunday, June 28, at his home in Chicago. The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter Rana Gordon.

"He did thoroughly practical, functional buildings -- no pretense," said Evanston architect John Macsai, who taught housing with Mr. Gordon at UIC.

June 28, 2009

Some sad news to report tonight: Chicago architect Ezra Gordon, a significant designer of residential buildings and a longtime teacher of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has died at age 88, according to members of his family.

Mr. Gordon had a long architectural partnership with Jack M. Levin and their portfolio ranged from towers to town houses. Among their projects: South Commons, ffrom 26th to 31st St., and Michigan to Prairie Avenues (1966-70); Dearborn Park high-rises at 901 S. Plymouth Court and 899 S. Plymouth Court (1978-79); Newberry Plaza at 1000-1050 N. State St. (1972-74); and Kennelly Square at 1751 N. Wells Street (1973)

The Tribune will prepare a full obituary of Mr. Gordon tomorrow, but here is his biographical summary from his oral history with the Art Institute of Chicago:

May 21, 2009

VANCOUVER, British Columbia— Arthur
Erickson, an architect and urban planner whose modernist structures sought to
respond to natural conditions, has died. He was 84.

A news release from his family says Erickson died in
Vancouver Wednesday afternoon. It did not say how.

Erickson's buildings include the Canadian embassy in
Washington (left), California Plaza in Los Angeles, Napp Laboratories in Cambridge,
England, Kuwait Oil Sector Complex in Kuwait City and Kunlun Apartment Hotel
Development in Beijing.

(Erickson also designed a plan for Chicago's Harold Washington Library Center during a late 1980s architecture competition for that building. It was passed over in favor of the winning design by Chicago architect Thomas Beeby.)

Erickson's architectural innovations, particularly in
the use of glass and concrete, won him numerous awards including the Royal
Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal, the French Academy of
Architecture Gold Medal, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal.

He was named a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1981,
one of the country's highest honors.

February 17, 2009

Chicago architect John A. Holabird Jr., a living link to a family dynasty of architects that shaped some of the city’s renowned early skyscrapers and such Art Deco landmarks as the Chicago Board of Trade, died Monday, February 16, in Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

At the end of a life that encompassed wartime parachuting, teaching drama and stints at television set design, Mr. Holabird, 88 years old, had a series of health problems including intestinal cancer, said his wife Janet.

Mr. Holabird’s grandfather, William Holabird, established his firm in 1880 as Chicago was about to undergo a building boom that would revolutionize the construction of tall buildings with internal cages of steel rather than load-bearing exterior walls.

Renamed Holabird and Roche in 1883, the firm designed such significant early skyscrapers as the Marquette Building at 140 S. Dearborn St., a robust “Chicago School” high-rise which handsomely expresses its underlying structure.

After World War I, the firm was reestablished as Holabird & Root and was led by Mr. Holabird’s father, John. It shaped such Art Deco gems as the Palmolive Building, the Board of Trade and 333 N. Michigan. Still in operation, it is one of Chicago's oldest architectural firms.

“John lived long enough that his earliest memories were of his grandfather all the way through the present,” said University of Illinois at Chicago architectural historian Robert Bruegmann, the author of books and an illustrated catalog about both firms. “This is an amazing thing in American architecture. There are very few firms that have had anything like this continuity. He was absolutely a link to the past.”